Citizen Tom

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Once again I am commenting at ANTI-BVBL.  Since the topic of Illegal Immigration will most likely soon arrive in Congress once again, I decided to see what ANTI-BVBL had to say about it.  Here is the latest post, Dare to Dream a Dream….universities and colleges support the Dream Act.

Like too many these days, Elena seems to think government has all money needed to do anything.  I guess she thinks that is what printing presses are for.

Anyway, in her last two comments (starting here), Elena tried to justify providing the children of illegal immigrants an education.  She sees that as an appropriate expense for the American taxpayer.  This is supposedly an appropriate reward for the desperation their parents showed in coming here.  Somehow, we are responsible and obligated.  She even turned my use of the word “struggle” to her own purposes.  Here is my answer.

Elena – By struggle, I did not mean law-breaking such as robbery or extortion.  For example, if someone wants an education badly enough, they could rob a bank to pay for it.  Would you approve?  No?  Then consider your support for having our government pay for the education of illegal immigrants.  To do this our government must deliberately turn a blind eye.  When the children of illegal immigrants attend public schools and colleges, our government must ignore the fact these people are in the country illegally.  How is that different from letting bank robbers use their ill-gotten gains to pay for a college education?  Are not taxpayers are being extorted to pay for the education of people who are not even suppose to be here?

You asked about welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Do I approve?  No!  Government exists so we can solve our own problems.  Government exists to protect our rights so we can solve our own problems.  Government does not exist so it can solve our problems for us.  That does not even work.  When we use government to solve our problems, we eventually end up abusing each other’s rights.

Some things are predicable.  Aristotle identified the processes by which democracies destroy themselves thousands of years ago.  Aristotle explained these processes in a book he appropriately named Politics.  Benjamin Franklin summarized these processes more succinctly….

When the people find they can vote themselves money; that will herald the end of the republic. — Benjamin Franklin

Most of the Federal Budget now goes to pay for social programs such as welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, education, and so forth.  These programs result from citizens voting to raid the public treasury.  Such programs are the main reason why we cannot balance the budget.  Unless we wise up, the result must be national bankruptcy and then tyranny.

Perhaps you have yet to consider what the right of free association really involves.  Government is just one of many types of organizations that people can use to get things done.  What makes government different is that we do not have a choice.  When government is involved, we must submit to doing what needs to be done somebody else’s way.  We are not allowed to work with people who share our beliefs.

Government is not necessary for education.  Before there were government-run schools, people managed to educate themselves and their children.  At the time of the American Revolution, about 90 percent of New Englanders could read and write (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Literacy).  Horace Mann did not start his so-called education reforms until 1837.

Change is not always a good thing.

When I was but a small boy, I discovered that I cared little for horror movies.  Because I enjoyed sleeping at night, I had little enthusiasm for make believe monsters.  Little did I realize then how incomparably tame are the monsters of our imagination.  The worse monsters are human horrors.  Unless we are properly educated and tamed with love, we feed upon each other.

Hence our nation’s most worrisome problem is the state of American education.  Given what we know about socialism, why should it surprise anyone that as cunning government leaders assume greater and greater control of it, the state of American education grows slowly worse — crumpling and folding under the pressures of bureaucratic inertia and stifling unions?

Unfortunately, poorly educated people are gullible.  So the latest reports bode ill.  Consider the excerpt below from this article, Nationalizing Public Education Comes After Health Care, in the American Thinker.

Though not yet in great numbers, some who voted for Obama are now being heard to say that they didn’t vote for what’s happening. Those confessions illustrate their failure to do due diligence on the candidate of their choice. His intentions were clearly laid out in his campaign documents and in many of his non-primetime speeches.

When the nation was watching, he was all about hope and change, based on a delivery style that hid content vagaries. When more focused interest groups were addressed, his language foretold the sort of change he intended. Consequently, little of what’s happened comes as any surprise to those who kept up with the full array of his messages. But few voters had time for that. And the old liberal media had no interest (emphasis added). (from here)

Don’t we know who educated these voters?  Was it not the members of the same labor unions who now earnestly want to nationalize the public schools?  Do you imagine an easy escape — charter schools, perhaps?

As the Obama administration pushes for more charter schools, a teachers’ union is pushing for a bigger role in them.

It’s a new development for the charter school movement, a small but growing — and controversial — effort to create new, more autonomous public schools, usually in cities where traditional schools have failed.

On Tuesday in New York, the United Federation of Teachers expects to formalize a contract with teachers at Animo South Bronx Charter High School, which is run by Green Dot, a nonprofit group that operates charter schools. Ten other New York charter schools are unionized.  (from here)

How likely is it that the president who is nationalizing our automobile companies and is giving them to the very same labor unions who helped to bankrupt them will save charter schools from teacher’s unions?

In fact, the process of nationalizing the public school system began when we first allowed the Federal Government to spend money on it.  Now nationalization is just gathering steam.

On June 1st the Common Core Initiative was announced. It’s goal – to draft national academic standards which states could “voluntarily” adopt if they want to continue to receive federal funding for public education. The names and qualifications of those involved in drafting these so called “voluntary” standards are being kept secret. The first set of standards developed as a result of this initiative are set to be released on July 9th and the second batch is due several months later.  (from here)

Check out the article above at RS RedState (H/T to the PWC Education Reform Blog;  see here).  Then consider how hard it already is to find any alternative to public education — even though we pay through the nose.

Consider an example close to home.  When I was monitoring the Prince William School Board, I did some research (here).   Back in February, the total proposed FY 2010 Prince William County Schools (PWCS) budget was $1091,665,670 (See page 21 here.).   This was expected to be reduced by $83 million.  That would have made the total per student spending (with a projected 1400 student increase) $14,605.  Imagine.  How much would you have to spend for a really good private school?

This is a review of a strange and fascinating book.   The book is the The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West by Lee Harris.

Because Harris’ book is so unusual, it goes over the heads of some.

This simplistic, muddled, frustrating and loopy analysis of Islam and the West contends that history has been hijacked by alpha males, high on testosterone, who, as fanatics dedicated to a cause, will easily ride roughshod over the rational, reasoning West. We have underestimated the realities of such fanaticism, and “for reason to tolerate those who refuse to play by the rules of reason is nothing else but the suicide of reason.”

Who’s tolerating such fanatics?  (continued here)

In The Suicide of Reason, Harris expands upon two subjects he discussed in Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History (my review here).

• Tolerance:  Human beings have difficulty tolerating those outside the family and tribe, but the rise of civilization depended upon expanding the definition of tolerance.  Western Civilization further expanded the definition of tolerance.   How?  Harris referenced John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration.   Locke explained we should tolerate any willing to abide by the ideal of tolerance.  Since Locke’s time the goal has become mutual toleration.  We have learned to tolerate any willing to leave others in peace.
• The Shaming System:   Harris described how the social conscious of each of us has been educated through shame.  When children, we were each taught to be trustworthy by being shamed when we violated the values of our society.   With the shaming system, our adherence to social values becomes “anchored at the visceral level in our automatic and mechanical sense of shame and pride” (pg 183 of Civilization and Its Enemies).

In The Suicide of Reason, Harris wants us to consider the implications of tolerance as now taught in the West and the fanatical intolerance of Islamic societies.  What happens when these two cultures meet.   As a New York Times book review observes, Harris perceives a lopsided contest.

“The Muslims are, from an early age, indoctrinated into a shaming code that demands a fanatical rejection of anything that threatens to subvert the supremacy of Islam,” he writes. During the years that this shaming code is instilled into children, the collective is emphasized above the individual and his freedoms. A good Muslim must forsake all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of Islam. Boys in particular are taught to be dominating and merciless, which has the effect of creating a society of holy warriors.

By contrast, the West has cultivated an ethos of individualism, reason and tolerance, and an elaborate system in which every actor, from the individual to the nation-state, seeks to resolve conflict through words. The entire system is built on the idea of self-interest. This ethos rejects fanaticism. The alpha male is pacified and groomed to study hard, find a good job and plan prudently for retirement: “While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin,” Harris writes, “the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive and ruthless.”  (from here)

The New York Times book reviewer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, then goes on to disagree with Harris’ pessimistic analysis and argues that Muslims can learn learn to be tolerant.  Not until months latter does Ayaan Hirsi Ali start to appreciate that Harris’ pessimistic analysis is as much an indictment of the West as it is of Islam (see here).  For example, the book contains this all too accurate description of public education.

Today, however, our modern system of education refuses to recognize that the modern liberal West might also have core traditions that cannot be overturned without destroying the foundation of liberalism itself.  Here again the consumerist model is implicit in our theory of educating children:  They are taught to think of themselves as ideology consumers, picking whatever religion or politics appeals to them.  Inevitably even the most intelligent consumer, especially a child, will be unconsciously swayed by the clever sales techniques of those peddling their own brand-name ideology, just as they are swayed when buying footwear and blue jeans.  Indeed increasingly our education system is being turned over to teachers who are frankly salesmen for the ideological brand that is in vogue among the interlectual elite.   (from page 196 of The Suicide of Reason)

What does Harris think is being lost?  Janet Levy puts it this way for FrontPageMagazine.com.

In The Suicide of Reason, Harris explains the evolution of America’s enlightened culture as a natural development originating from the ideal circumstances of pioneer life. He describes how America was settled by stubborn, rugged individualists who fled to the New World to escape religious persecution and freely practice their religion. These early settlers were mostly Protestant dissenters who valued hard work, were determined to hew their own path and refused to take orders from anyone. While the Old World remained a hierarchal society of landowners and serfs with a strong military and government enforcing laws and maintaining the status quo, the North American continent was a wilderness unburdened by history and rife with opportunity. It was geographically separated from Europe and free of threats except for Indians. It couldn’t be conquered, only settled, and every pioneer was in charge of his own destiny. While the Old World admired the life of the idle rich and military strength and subjugation were the keys to wealth and power, in America, a settler with a Protestant ethic cleared his own land or paid someone else to do it. He held in contempt those who subjugated others to do their work. Hard work was honorable and the route to freedom, wealth and the good life. These unique characteristics of the New World — the right to keep the product of your labor, religious freedom and the lack of imposition on others — spawned American liberalism. Thus, America became fertile ground for the creation of a culture of enlightened reason.  (from here)

Harris thinks the Bible played a critical role in the development of America’s enlighten culture.

Beverage (Author’s note:  Senator Albert Beverage in his biography of John Marshall) notes the importance to the formation of the American republic of the stubborn individual, who insisted on doing all his own thinking.  But where did this trait come from?  Was it because of the pioneers and frontiersmen carefully followed the development of advanced European thought of the time?  No, the only book they read was the Bible.  And because the American pioneers were mainly made up of Protestant Dissenters, they each were fully convinced that they themselves could determine the conduct of their own affairs.  They did not need priests or experts to tell them what the Bible said:  No matter how simple and uneducated they might be, they had been raised to believe they could figure out what the Bible said for themselves.

Strange as it may sound, the Bible idolatry of the Protestant Dissenters played a critical role in the formation of America’s culture of reason.  As we discussed in Chapter 10 (Author’s note: entitled Reason and Autonomy), the tradition of the Protestant Dissenter is one in which each child has not merely a right but a duty to make up his own mind.  The American Baptists, for example, did not believe in forcing the child to submit to his parent’s religion; children had to accept Christianity into their own hearts;  it is not permissible to ram it down their throats.  (from page 170 of The Suicide of Reason)

So “Bible idolatry” is the source of American rugged individualism?  For the most part Harris succeeds in his effort in writing a book where he appears to be thoughtfully objective observer.  With this strange turn of words, “Bible idolatry,” I suspect Harris betrays his own inner struggle.   Harris frankly explains that a culture of enlightened reason is a freakishly unlikely event, one he must attribute to a particular book.  Yet he apparently finds it difficult to share the views of the Protestant Dissenters.

Hence The Suicide of Reason considers three raging struggles.

• The cultural/philosophical conflict between the West and Islam.
• The ideological battle within the West over the cultural values.
• The puzzling of one man over what he should believe about God and reason.

On April 16th I posted Delegate Bob Marshall’s observation that Prince William County Schools did not appear to have followed proper procedures when it selected its mathematics text for the fifth grade (see here).  These concerns have since made it into one of our local papers.

The fifth-grade primer “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space” is not on the state’s approved list of textbooks and has its detractors.

Kim Simons, one such detractor of the text that teaches Math Investigations, said the Prince William County school system did not follow required procedure in adopting the elementary school textbooks in 2006.

Virginia Department of Education regulations state that assessments of textbook criteria must have the approval of the local school board.

Simon said she asked Prince William school officials, under the Freedom of Information Act, for a copy of the school board’s official approval of the book.

Simons said school officials told her that the school board didn’t do that, so they didn’t have a copy.

“As far as Prince William County was concerned, they were done. It wasn’t their job to approve the criteria,” Simons said.  (continued here)

As the news story above continues, it becomes clear that PWCS does not seem to have followed the rules.  Nonetheless, neither the School Board nor its lawyer seem willing to concede the point.  If you are interested in the PWCS legal argument, here (04-22-09-ltr-to-del-marshall-re-mi-w-encls) is a copy.

Who is right?  Since the rules in this case do not include enforcement procedures, it does not make a huge amount of difference.  What is pertinent is the fact that a great many parents are unhappy with the textbook.  Moreover, the Virginia Department of Education did not recommend using the text.

What the squabble also highlights is the amount of latitude the public school system gives professional educators in the instruction of children.   Even though many parents have good reason to think Math Investigations provides their children inadequate math instruction, these parents are stuck with it.

What I fear is programs like Math Investigation reveal only the tip of the iceberg.   What else is missing from the education of children?  What else have so-called professionals deprived children of in their education?

In an earlier era, local communities had full control over the education of their children.   In addition to making certain their children learned Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic,  parents saw to it their children learned about the Bible and the role of good men and women in the governance of their community.  Do they learn these things now?

Look about you.  We live in an increasing secularized society.   More and more people think only of themselves.   What is the primary value taught by the public school system?  It is tolerance, tolerance of almost anything.  Children learn their rights and to esteem themselves.  They learn little of responsibilities except perhaps to Mother Earth, polar bears and whales.

Of politics children learn too little.  They are too likely to learn participation in politics consists of nothing more than going to demonstrations and waving a sign about.  Of religion they learn almost nothing of value.  Christianity they may too easily come to regard as unscientific superstition, and multiculturalists will teach them other religions are just variations on the same theme as Christianity.

What children are too unlikely to learn is how Christians came together in brotherly love to form a republic.   They will not learn how:

• Christian nations worked to end religious warfare by enshrining freedom of religion in Law.
• Christian nations were the first to set slaves free.
• Christians created the first nations where men and women have equal rights.

PWC Education Reform Blog has the location.  See here.